Dewey set out to show the harm which traditional philosophical dualisms were doing to our culture, and he thought that to do this job he needed a metaphysics--a description of the generic traits of existences that would solve (or dissolve) the traditonal problems of philosophy, as well as open up new avenues for cultural development. I think he was successful in this latter, larger, aim; he is one of the few philosophers of our century whose imagination was expansive enough to envisage a culture shaped along lines different from those we have developed in the West during the last three hundred years. (Rorty, Richard "Dewey's Metaphysics, Consequences of Pragmatism: Essays 1972-1980. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1982, P. 85)
Descartes believes a lack of a belief in God will hinder the process of discovering truths that cannot be doubted. He says, Even so we shall not have met and answered the doubts suggested above regarding the reliability of our mental faculties; instead we shall have given mental force to them. For whatever way it be supposed that I have come to be what I am, whether by fate or by chance, or by a continual succession and connection of things, or by some other means, since to be deceived and to err is an imperfection, the likelihood of me being so imperfect as to be the constant victim of deception will be increased in proportion as the power to which they assign my origin is lessened. (Descartes, P. 90).
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